Then l learned to play guitar and l started writing songs and my mother formed for me a publishing business, so we started publishing and managing artists.

I wanted to go to regular high school- it looked like a lot of fun.

There's a big difference between somebody who does acid on weekends and somebody who takes downers every day.

It was the worst period of my life. I had all this gigantic acceptance as a kid, and all of a sudden there was this monumental rejection.

Acid wasn't getting a whole lot of bad press at the time, and as I saw the whole bad-press thing happen, I became aware that the government had done a whole lie on all the other benign drugs as well. It became clear to me that the government wanted no real drug education.

Well, I went to school with Jan and Dean, Ryan O'Neal, some of the Beach Boys we all use to party together.

There was this little shaggy dog on it, and Frank Weatherwax was working the dog. One day we were all sitting around, and Frank said, listen, my brother Rudd just got the rights back from MGM for Lassie, and said have your agent check into it. I did, and I went for a screen test.